Transit Updates

One day last week, I looked down at my morning newspaper and saw Roger looking up at me. Roger has added the TU to his running list of blogs - cool.

When I noticed Roger's blog blurb in the paper, I was happy to see that he was posting about a meeting hosted by Lucille Brewer who wrote this letter last summer about the bus to the mall. I was unable to attend the meeting, but I do want to become a member of Citizens for Bus Transportation.

Maybe even more people will join the group, with the 6% increase in CDTA use over the past year, there must be more citizens who are indeed for bus transportation.

Gotta say, this was quite a week for CDTA news in the TU, they even pointed out my favorite new tool on the CDTA website. Yes, it's a bit bug-gy, but this software-tester-in-a-previous-life finds workarounds and overall, thinks the Trip Planner is pretty nifty. I've actually only used it for practical purposes twice thus far. The first time, I needed to figure out how to get to Siena college from downtown Albany one recent Friday evening, it worked like a charm. It's a good thing I had a ride home though, because the last bus back to Albany from Siena leaves Latham Circle Mall at 6:52, so it must get to Siena shortly thereafter, this was not going to work for me since I'd need to return back closer to 11:00 p.m. Three words: More Service Needed.

The second time I used Trip Planner, I encountered a couple of odd things. I needed to get to an address on Washington Avenue Extension which requires taking a little Shuttle bus. The Trip Planner had me get on the shuttle, but (i) it referred to the shuttle by a number (27[v]) and NO PLACE does CDTA refer to the ShuttleBug by a number, so this is ummm... kind of confusing, and (ii) a great feature of the ShuttleBug service is that it makes stops at office buildings all along its route -- even if the buildings are not scheduled ROUTE STOPS, however it doesn't appear that the Trip Planner was given that information because it had me get out at Wal-Mart (eek) and walk across four lanes of traffic (or is it 6?) to the other side of Washington Avenue Extension, when really all I needed to do was tell the bus driver where I was headed -- it's cool like that.

HANDS DOWN, the best CDTA announcement of the past month was this one. Thank you Philip Morris and Proctors for hopefully being just the FIRST local arts organization to partner with our Transit Authority.